This Sunday, one of the journalists who knows Barcelona best, Eugeni Madueño, now retired, reported in a tweet that on Saturday night the doors had been closed for the final time at the only bar in its district, the Dreta de l'Eixample, that had been run by the same family for 70 years. The owner, Carles, had explained to him, in a tone between between depressed and defeated, that for the last year in their establishment, located on the corner of Avinguda Diagonal and Carrer de Girona, they had resisted pressure from a vulture fund that had bought the whole building to turn it into tourist apartments. Yet another case, according to Madueño, in a neighbourhood that is losing its identity and life to become a theme park.
I could not agree more with the reflection of the veteran journalist, for several decades a narrator of social transformations in Barcelona and its metropolitan area. He is from Santa Coloma de Gramenet, and well acquainted with neighbourhood movements, which he has followed and reported with almost surgical precision. Cities become uniform, they become poorer, with the disappearance of emblematic establishments, recognized by people not only for the years they have been open, but because they have been capable to leave their imprint, to become a sign of identity. The Bar Restaurant Jofama offered homestyle, Catalan and fresh-from-the-market meals and served breakfast, lunch and dinner.
In this increasingly bland Barcelona, devoid of personality and gradually becoming like every other large city where local shops and businesses do not stand out, countless well-remembered and beloved establishments have disappeared one by one, such as the Cinemes Texas in Gràcia, the Cal Lluís restaurant in the Raval, the Casa Xancó selling men's shirts on the Rambla, the Herboristeria del Rei on Plaça Reial, the Germanes Garcia wickerware store, the Sagarra restaurant, El Gran Cafè, Casa Calicó and La Casa de les Sabatilles. There are 209 businesses in the Catalan capital listed as historic, 30 of great heritage interest, but then there are so many more that are also part of the city's landscape and find themselves, when the time comes, without assistance and without protection.
In a text taped to the facade of the Jofama, Anna, the granddaughter of the founders, explains how her grandfather died without knowing what it was to have a rest, "because behind any small business there is a lot of sweat and a lot of sacrifice". Then followed Carles, her father, until this Saturday. "Where there were families and life, there are now only tourist rental apartments, and a vulture fund has finally managed to close us down," she writes. Beyond those who knew the establishment and those who have summoned it up in the last two days on Twitter, Jofama was not a famous place. But it was a beloved place.
Something will have to be done to prevent this continuous trickle of establishments that close and that in less hostile conditions would have continued to serve and be a feature of Barcelona's small business fabric. Cities are made unique by all that they possess that makes them different. This distinction remains necessary and must be protected.